Game of Thrones Recap: Poor Sansa

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Game of Thrones Recap: Poor Sansa

Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

Spoilers for the sixth episode of Season 5 of Game of Thrones follow, obviously.

We’ve reached a fascinating point in Game of Thrones: Not only is the show departing dramatically from the plot of George R. R. Martin’s books, but they’re catching up to them, and even moving beyond them. As I dissect the changes between the two, I’ll do my best not to spoil any important plot points. But remember: We’re entering uncharted territory where we won’t always know what a spoiler, or the "real" story, actually is.

This week, the show takes its first major misstep, not only of this season, but its more recent expeditions into uncharted and original territory. Unsurprisingly, it involves rape.

Sansa

It's Sansa's wedding day, and her barely concealed frenemy Myranda arrives to draw her bath and give her "helpful" warnings about making sure she pleases Ramsay so that he doesn't murder her with dogs. Sansa's no fool anymore, and immediately sees the game being played; she asks Myranda how long she's been in love with Ramsay, and tells her to get out. "I'm Sansa Stark of Winterfell," she says, sounding more like Catelyn than she ever has before. "This is my home, and you can't frighten me."

She breaks down a little after Myranda leaves—which is fair enough, since she is in enormous danger—but it's still a wonderfully fierce moment where we see her projecting the kind of strength we'd expect from her father, her mother, or any warrior we've seen holding a sword. She's making good on the promise she made Littlefinger: to stop being a victim, and start taking control of her destiny.

And then the show decides that it's time for Ramsay to rape Sansa while Theon watches. Yup, after getting married in the Godswood, she and Ramsay head to a bedroom where he tells her to take off her clothes. When Theon starts to leave, Ramsay smiles a terrible smile and tells him to stay. "You've known Sansa since she was a girl. Now watch her become a woman." Theon cries, Sansa cries, everyone cries, because it's the worst.

There have been a lot of complaints over the years about the way Game of Thrones deals with rape, and it's earned them. It has a tendency to use rape sensationally and frequently, not to mention the troubling incident last season where a director filmed a rape scene and didn't even realize it.

In general, I'm not a big fan of people getting raped in entertainment as a manipulative way of heightening the stakes, but I'm even less of a fan of people getting raped in entertainment when it accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Sansa has spent most of the show suffering and being a victim, and her arc over the last season was satisfying because she finally achieved escape trajectory. Even in the books, where Sansa's abuse at King's Landing was more unpleasant, the gauntlet of humiliation and violence stopped when she finally got free of the place. That was the triumph at the heart of the moment last season when she emerged at the top of the stairwell in black, announcing her arrival as player rather than pawn.

Forcing her back into the role of victim and sexually humiliating her at the hands of yet another sadistic fiance adds nothing that we haven't seen before, and indeed, feels regressive. All the forward momentum of her character development is undercut by this assault, transforming her back into the same little girl she was at King's Landing, weeping as her dress was torn off. Shoehorning additional abuse and rape into her story at this point isn't just upsetting; it's boring and counterproductive. Poorly done, show. Poorly done.

In the books Rather than Sansa, Ramsay ends up marrying Jeyne Poole, a girl from Winterfell forced to masquerade as Arya Stark. Jeyne is an incredibly tragic character, one who was raised alongside Sansa with many of the comforts of the highborn, though she herself was not. After Ned's execution, it's implied that she's sent to one of Littlefinger's brothels to be prostituted; whip scars are found on her back before Ramsay ever gets to her. On the night of her wedding, Ramsay forces Theon to participate in their sexual acts rather than just watch. So I guess the scene with Sansa could have been even more terrible, but that's like saying it was merciful for the Bolton men to decapitate Robb Stark and sew the head of his direwolf on his corpse, when they could have taken his head and used it to play kickball outside of the Twins. So congratulations on being marginally less horrible than the worst you could been, show. The slowest of claps for you.

Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

Tyrion

Now that their wacky road trip has been derailed, Jorah and Tyrion hike up the coast, and finally stop attacking each other verbally and physically, and start talking. The stoic Jorah finally breaks down and asks what Tyrion is doing in Essos, and learns that he killed Lord Tywin; at the same time, Jorah accidentally gets some bad news about his own father, Lord Commander Mormont, and his death during that unpleasant mutiny beyond the Wall.

After some mournful expressions, the conversation turns to something brighter: Jorah's massive crush on Daenerys and why he follows her so devotedly. "Do you believe there's a plan for this world?" Jorah asks. That's the question that Game of Thrones fans have been asking for a long, long time, my friend. Tyrion says no, he doesn't believe that fate—aka, George R. R. Martin—has a plan for them. Jorah used to be a cynic too, until the moment he saw Daenerys emerge from the ashes of a fiery building with dragons coiled around her neck. Now, like so many people in various internet forums, he believes that he knows how the show is going to end: with the Dragon Queen ascending the Iron Throne.

Their intense nerd-out about Game of Thrones endgame theories is interrupted when they stumble across a party of armed slavers, who immediately take them captive and debate what to do with them. They decide to sell Jorah as a slave in Volantis, until quick-thinking survival expert Tyrion immediately convinces them Jorah is one of the greatest warriors of Westeros, and that they should bring him to the recently reopened fighting pits in Meereen instead. So it looks like things are about to take a turn for the Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

In the books: Rather than heading back toward Meereen, Tyrion and Jorah end up getting sold into slavery as a degrading circus act. Fortunately, it seems like we're going to be spared that particular horrorshow, which could be the one solid choice the show makes this week.

Helen Sloan/HBO

Cersei and the Ladies Tyrell

Littlefinger returns from playing matchmaker in Winterfell to find Kings Landing a changed place, and is immediately confronted by Manson-family-reject Brother Lancel, who warns him that the flesh trade will no longer be tolerated. "We both peddle fantasies," he tells the religious zealot. "Mine just happen to be interesting."

He heads for his meeting with Cersei, where he shares the shocking news that Lord Bolton has wedded his son to Sansa Stark, choosing the favor of the North over loyalty to a "hated Southern house." Although she's suitably enraged by this betrayal, Littlefinger convinces her to let Stannis and Lord Bolton fight it out, and then send a force North to confront the victor. He generously offers the services of the knights of the Vale, in return for a small token of her gratitude: Making him Warden of the North.

Of course, if he's Warden in the North and Stannis wins and names Sansa Wardeness, wouldn't it be terribly convenient for them to marry? Especially if Littlefinger marches the forces of the Vale up North and pledges them to the cause of Stannis. I'm just guessing, but it seems like a smart way to achieve the dream that has burned inside him since he was a boy: Taking the seat of the Stark lord he jealously hated and marrying the beautiful auburn-haired girl that should have been his. It might be Sansa instead of Catelyn, but he'll take it.

Lady Olenna, meanwhile, has arrived back in King's Landing to deal with the huge headache that Cersei created by getting Loras arrested for the crime of gayness. In a conversation that feels like the verbal version of Minesweeper, Lady Olenna asks Cersei if she has really thought this through, since King's Landing is still completely dependent on Highgarden for gold and food. After all, can you eat revenge when you're starving? I often wonder if Cersei hungers for anything else.

During the initial hearing Loras denies all the charges, as does Margaery, who is pressured to take the stand by the High Sparrow. But the moment you see Olyvar enter the room, you know how this is going to play out: He immediately sells out Loras as his gay sex friend, no doubt for generous compensation from Cersei. Not only does Loras now face a formal trial by the Faith, but Margaery gets arrested for bearing false witness. And Cersei smiles, because revenge is delicious.

In the books: Sansa never leaves the Eyrie and the girl who marries Ramsay is a fraud pretending to be Arya, but Cersei was completely on board with the deception to help her Bolton allies. Loras is never arrested by the Faith Militant, though he suffers a terrible injury in a military campaign he undertakes at Cersei's urging. Cersei does manage to get Margaery arrested, however, although she does it by falsely claiming that the queen had been sleeping around. The irony is thick. We never hear about Lady Olenna returning from Highgarden, although Mace does hurry back when he hears about the arrest.

Macall B. Polay/HBO

Myrcella and the Sand Snakes

We haven't seen Myrcella in a long time, but now she's all grown up, and currently acting out her own version of Romeo and Juliet with her (non-sociopathic) fiance, Trystane Martell. He wants to marry her as soon as possible and consummate their love, and they're making out in the Water Gardens when her uncle/father Jaime emerges in the bloodstained garb of a Dornish soldier, with Bronn at his side.

The Sand Snakes arrive at the same time, ready to seek vengeance for Oberyn by kidnapping (or killing) Myrcella, and end up battling Jaime and Bronn until axeman Areo Hotah shows up with the palace guards and arrests them all. It's all very weird and rushed, another instance of a storyline created for the show that feels forced into place, rather than unfolding with the carefully orchestrated slow burn we're used to on Game of Thrones. On a more mechanical level, the much-anticipated fight scene with the Sand Snakes feels oddly subpar, almost like it was ripped from the outtakes of Reign.

In the books: Very little of this happens. Rather than a plot to harm Myrcella, there was a plot to prop her up as a Dornish rival to Tommen, although this too failed spectacularly—and cost Myrcella an ear in the chaos. Jaime and Bronn never went to rescue her, although the Kingsguard knight assigned to protect her gets recruited into the scheme by Doran's daughter Arianne, and killed by Areo Hotah while attempting to smuggle the princess out of Sunspear.

Arya

In the House of Black and White, Arya washes the body of a dead man. On the scale of unpleasant things that Arya has had to see and do over the last several years, washing corpses might as well be washing laundry: bo-ring. When she's finished, two men take the corpse out a certain door, and she reaches for it, curious. The severe blond-haired young girl slams it shut, and when Arya demands to know what they do with the bodies, she says that Arya will know when she's ready, and not before.

When Arya insists she wants to play the game of faces again, the girl tells her own story: She too was the daughter of a great lord in Westeros, and she enlisted the Faceless Men to kill her stepmother after the woman tried to poison her. Arya looks pleased to hear that she's not the only one with a story of familial vengeance, at least until the girl finishes and her face turns cold. "Was that true, or a lie?" Arya looks confused, which is to say she's lost the game again.

In the middle of the night, Jaqen returns to play yet another round of the game, the one Arya crossed the sea to play—not of thrones, but of faces, of lies. Finally, Arya tells her own story, slipping in little deceptions here and there. Each time Jaqen catches her, he hits her with a stick. She finishes by insisting that she left the Hound to die because she hated him, and of course Jaqen whacks her. She looks up indignant, insisting it was true, but he knows better: "A girl lies, to me, to the Many-Faced god, to herself." Arya demands that they stop playing the game, but Jaqen offers a hard truth: "We never stop playing." Just ask Littlefinger.

Later, a man arrives with his terminally ill daughter, explaining that no healer can help her and that she is in unbearable pain. Arya sits with her and she lies a beautiful lie; she says that she, too, was sick, that her father brought her to the House of Black and White, and that when she drank the water, she was healed. She fills a stone bowl from the assisted suicide fountain and tells the child to drink if she wants to stop the pain. Later, as she washes the child's body, she looks up to find the mysterious door open, and Jaqen beckoning. He leads her down a long hall into a massive crypt of wide stone columns, covered with little recessed windows like a honeycomb. Each one contains what looks like a head—or perhaps, a face. He tells Arya that she isn't ready to become no one yet. "But she is ready to become someone else."

In the books: The blond girl—called "the waif" in the books—tells a very similar origin story, and reveals that part of it was untrue, though she never says which part. Rather than mercy killing a child, Arya undergoes a different sort of initiation before she is allowed to enter the chamber of faces, although it could still happen on the show as well.